I don't remember that!....

I was having a look for "stuff" today.  Stuff I know I've made, for me mainly, when the muse was upon me and inevitably never finished.
I had a vague idea where it was, but with a small workshop, 2 caravans and a new shed to choose from it was likely to take a while, especially as the contents of the caravans is slowly being sorted out and they're not exactly tidy!

But I found the Cadbury's tin a lot of it was in. I love tins. I keep all sorts in tins.  I've got Wallace and Grommit's cookie tin, every kind of tartan, you name it.
So I lifted the lid in hope and there was a pile of relics that would do justice to a dubious chapel in the Spanish hills.

My ancient sleeper built buffer stop, made of real wooden sleepers and rail properly rusted in the garden one winter. Don't tell me the colour's wrong, this is yer akshool rust.  It's intended for my unfinished 1/32nd scale narrow gauge diorama, which I gave an old friend, who died a month later. Probably bonfire fodder by now.

Then there's the Drummond Bug.  Good Grief, that's kicked around for years!  I saw a drawing in an old Model Railway Constructor and had to make it. Not for me the big mainline buggers.  I like the weird and wonderful.  This coincided with my then new interest in 7mm scale.
I include it here, because it is truly scratchbuilt. A bit of a hobbyhorse of mine.  I cannot stand all the whingers on forums who want, want want, but are too lazy to have a go at actually making one.  It's cheap and no more difficult than building some overpriced kit.

Good old nickel silver silver sheet, cut with a piercing saw.  The boiler is rolled to shape, with turned brass formers in each end.

As it happens I had some etching on the go for a client at the time and included the footplace valances and bogie mudguards.

Everything else is hand cut.

The inspection saloon bit is done in styrene. Amazingly it hasn't warped. I usually get a lot of trouble with that.

The interior is more styrene for the seats with tissue stuck on before the paint to suggest a texture.

The toilet compartment window is "frosted" by having tiny scoring with a knife applied on the back, leaving tiny bits of clear, through which you could possibly see Dugald Drummond shaking the drips off if he was less than discreet.

Together:-

The chassis is 1mm brass sheet pierced to shape. Slater's wheels and a proper motor, a Romford Terrier with a home made gearbox to allow double "crawler" gearing.  I don't use Jap crap.

And here are all the boiler fittings, turned at the time on my Unimat 3 lathe.

It was having the use of a variety of lathes at school, on which I turned many fittings that got me into scratchbuilding model locos.  When I left school I went round the metalwork shop stores, dropping every piece of brass rod in my brief case.  I was the only lad who ever used it. It finally ran out a year ago!

I did rather push the boat out at this time as I decided it should have inside valve gear, very visible through the boiler/frames gap.  It was here that I more or less stopped as I couldn't work out how to make the one and only drive axle into a crank axle.

And those pesky mudguards?  Look at them. Every mad scheme to hold them on, but none successful.

Also seen are the steel connecting rods and a few spectacle rims in brass.

Now this gave rise to the header title:-

Completely scratchbuilt in very thin nickel silver, obviously a narrow gauge chassis, but of what, I can't, for the life of me, remember!